Sins of Our Ancestors Boxed Set

by Bridget E. Baker

  Dr. Claudia Flores exits the truck in the very back, surveying her surroundings with a scrunched nose and a glare.

  “Oh good grief,” I say. “Did you have to bring her?”

  Adam's eyebrows rise. “You don't like her? She's the best physician we have. The staff calls her Mílagro trabajadora or something like that. It means miracle worker—”

  “I know what it means.” I exhale heavily and turn toward the lab. “Better tell them all to come in. We don't have any time to spare.”

  We inject the new recruits who I didn't formerly dose with antibodies with the hacker virus immediately, and start a timer for them. Another three-dozen donors might come in handy. Since they'll be exposed to Tercera non-stop for the first while, the hacker virus should replicate almost as quickly in their blood as it has in the Marked kids.

  Aunt Anne places Dr. Flores in charge of treatment of the recovering patients and focuses herself on identifying which patients to dose next.

  “You should sleep a few more hours,” Sam says, “now that help is here.”

  I shake my head. “We're on day five since the acceleration. If we want any hope of saving the remaining infected patients, it has to be now, before the damage to their organs is irreversible. For many of them, it already is. The next ten hours are the most critical. I'll sleep after that.”

  He sighs. “Fine, but I can't stand around doing nothing any more. I’ll ask Dan put me to work bringing patients in.”

  I grab his wrist. “You can't do that. You're not standing around like a bum. You're supposed to be recovering like all of them.” I point at Brayden and the other early volunteers, all convalescing with IVs now that we have fluids. “You had almost three times as much blood drawn as you should have and even you will take time to recover from that loss.”

  Sam smiles. “I love that you're worried, but it's me. I'm completely fine.”

  I shake my head. “Samuel Roth, you push too hard. It's one of the things I love about you, but I want to keep loving it so. Go. Lay. Down. Right now!”

  “I didn't want it to be this way, you know,” Sam says.

  I set the measuring tools down and turn to face him. “What way? What are you talking about?”

  He sighs. “We can talk later. I don't want to distract you when you can’t even take a shower.” The sorrow in his eyes when he stands twists something in my heart.

  “I can spare a few minutes. Please sit.”

  He glances at the nurses and another physician, Dr. Blackwell, who Aunt Anne's training.

  “None of them will pay us any attention,” I say.

  “I believe you love me, but I know you were trying to decide between what you felt for me, and what you felt for Wesley.” He sits on the stool again and runs his hands through his hair, pulling it out of its ponytail. It falls around his face like the hair of a Spartan warrior. “I didn't want to be chosen by default. I genuinely liked Wesley, and I'm sorry about what happened.” He looks down at the ground. “It should've been me that died, not Wesley. I promised to protect you and I failed.”

  I take Sam's hand and wait until he meets my eyes. “Sam, you have never failed me in your life. You’re tremendous and amazing, and—” I choke up. “If we'd had time, I would’ve talked to you before we reached Nebraska. You gave me space and I appreciate that, but I didn't need it, not really. I only needed to see that even though I do rash things and miscalculate, and even though I'm wrong sometimes, I'm good enough for you.”

  “You're better than me in almost every way,” Sam says. “You always have been.”

  I snort. “Not even close, but I appreciate the sentiment.”

  “If Wesley hadn't died—”

  I shake my head. “Wesley loved me, and I cared for him a great deal. Before I learned more about who I am and what I wanted, I thought he and I would be perfect. I had this lovely dream, this image of a fanciful future featuring domestic bliss in sleepy little Port Gibson. Life happened, though. Dreams don't withstand reality, but love survives and thrives among the real.”

  “If I could knit, I’d knit that into a pillow.” Sam grins. “Love survives and thrives among the real.”

  I laugh out loud. “You can’t knit something into a pillow.”

  “You can’t?” Sam lifts one eyebrow. “You mean you don’t know how? Or that it can’t be done? Because I’m pretty sure it can.”

  I roll my eyes. “Knitting is for like sweaters. Look, the point is that Wesley knew, ever since you and I made that trip down to Galveston, that there's only been one man for me.”

  Sam's eyes are greener than ever before. He squeezes my hand.

  “Wesley regretted almost Marking me from the very second he did it. He wished he was more of a warrior, more like you I think. He finally realized after we reached Port Gibson again that none of those things, not your healing abilities, or your fighting skills, or even your impossible-to-handle good looks were the reason I loved you more than him. You're still here with me, in spite of being shot six times. In spite of attacks, journeys, imprisonment, and my confusion about who I am and what I want.”

  “You picked me because I’m hard to kill?” Sam squints at me. “That’s not very flattering. Cockroaches are hard to kill.”

  I swat his arm. “No, just listen. You're still here in spite of it all. Your brother told you I kissed Wesley and you didn’t freak out. You were calm, so calm. You're my rock in a stormy sea. I love you because you're the other half that makes me whole, and because you get me, even when I don’t get myself. I might have been happy with Wesley, if I'd never woken up and seen the real Sam, but I did. And from that moment when I sat next to you on the night of the Marked attack.” I look down at my hands, and then up into his eyes. Eyes I wish I could never look away from. Eyes I trust, eyes that draw me in every single time I glance at them. “From that moment on, there’s only been you for me.”

  Sam leans down and his lips brush mine. My heart pounds and the butterflies swoop and swirl in my chest.

  I whisper, “I chose you, Samuel Roth, long before Wesley saved us all on that bridge. His choice may haunt me, actually it may haunt us both, but it doesn't change how I feel about you. It doesn’t shift my feelings about us. We belong together, not apart, now and forever. That's my choice, and I'm ready to choose it over and over, every day, no matter what comes.”

  Sam's lips cover mine, and my arms reach up to circle his neck. He scoops me onto his lap and deepens the kiss. My hands run over the muscles in his shoulders and then his chest.

  “Excuse me,” a shrill voice says. “Anne Orien told me you could show me the syringes.”

  Sam shifts and I see Dr. Flores, toe tapping, eyes sparking, staring down her nose at us.

  “I thought you were managing the patients who've been dosed already?”

  She exhales heavily. “I am, but I need to know the basics of the process, so that I know what stage they're at and how the underlying method works.”

  “You don’t know what a syringe is?” And she’s WPN’s best physician? I stifle a giggle. I want to tell her to shove off, but I think about sweet baby Rose and her mother. I lean my forehead against Sam's chest and breathe in and out once, and then I sit up and slide off his lap. Sam swats my backside before he goes looking for Uncle Dan to be put to work.

  I walk through the process of how we prepare the doses with Dr. Flores, but she doesn't seem to care much. As I suspected, she just didn't want to watch Sam and I making out. My distaste for Dr. Flores aside, Adam's people are expediting things exponentially. If that means I need to suffer through tense interactions with Claudia Fancy Pants Flores, well, so be it.

  After I've prepared the doses for the current blood draws, I decide to check on Rafe. It's been more than twelve hours since we dosed him, closer to eighteen actually, but we haven’t seen him. I hope he's improved dramatically.

  I wind my way down the street, watching the flurry of activity that had all but died off before we arrived. I hope it only increase
s over the next twelve hours. When I reach the hospital entrance, a sullen looking Marked girl in all black stops me. “State your purpose.”

  “I'm an aid worker, same as everyone. I need to talk to Rafe.”

  “Rafe's in a meeting with his chief security officer at present.” The girl tosses her hair over her shoulder and rests her hand on a gun at her hip.

  “He’s meeting with Todd?”

  Her eyes widen.

  “I'm Ruby Behl, and I brought the cure here. I think he'll want to talk to me.”

  Sean turns a corner down the hall. I wave to catch his attention, and the sullen girl pulls her gun on me.

  “Stop that Pam,” Sean says. “Let Ruby through. I'll take her to see Rafe.”

  I roll my eyes at the overeager gate attendant. “I'm glad to see you up and walking. When were you dosed?”

  Sean smiles, and it pulls at the skin of the enormous scar that covers his gaunt cheek. “Not quite ten hours ago. I felt good enough to eat a few hours later, and now I'm ready to dance.”

  I almost laugh until I realize he's not kidding. Compared to how he felt before, he's energized enough to dance a jig or something, which is exciting. I smile at him. “I'm so glad, Sean. Hopefully you'll be Mark and Tercera free in another day. It looks like your organs didn't suffer any permanent damage.”

  He nods. “I'm one of the lucky ones, I know.”

  I follow him down the hall and around a corner. Then we head up an elevator, and down another hallway.

  “How many doses will you be able to make?” Sean stops in front of a door, his eyes cast downward, his boots shuffling when he asks.

  “We plan to dose every single Marked patient in the next twelve hours. It's simply a matter of locating them all. There weren't a lot of protocols placed on where people chose to live.”

  He shrugs. “We did what we could.”

  I put a hand on his shoulder. “I know you did. You did really well. We're going to save every single person we can.”

  Sean meets my eyes. “I know you are. I'm sorry we locked you up. I should've let you go, and I'm sorry I didn't.”

  “For what it's worth, Sam's sorry he knocked you unconscious,” I say.

  “No he isn't.” Sean smiles.

  I shake my head. “No, he isn't.”

  Sean says, “Dax still hates him for that gunshot, but Sam does what needs to be done and doesn't feel guilty about it. It's necessary right now, impressive actually. I admire him for it, because guilt eats at me all the time.”

  “Me too.”

  Sean pushes the door open. “Rafe, Ruby wanted to check on you.”

  Rafe and Todd sit across from each other, intently focused on some papers on the round table in front of them. “Ruby. Come in.”

  Rafe's hair isn't spiked and it looks inexplicably bizarre falling softly around his face, like he’s a normal person now and not a punk rock cartoon. He's dressed in fresh clothes and he's taken a shower, which is more than I can say for myself. Todd looks almost exactly the same as he did the last time I saw him.

  “How do you feel?” I ask. “Both of you. When did you get dosed, Todd?”

  Todd looks pointedly at Sean. “Thanks for bringing her to us, but if you're up to it, you should resume your post.”

  Sean ducks out and closes the door behind him.

  “I was dosed an hour or two after Sean,” Todd says. “I feel amazing too. I hadn't progressed as far as most because I was in my first year. No second year symptoms yet when the accelerant hit.”

  “How did you get Marked?” I ask. “I don't think I ever heard.”

  Todd grimaces. “I was the leader of one of David Solomon's border guards, tasked with keeping the area near Galveston clear of Marked individuals. When a Marked kid jumped from a tree and landed on my back, my entire unit turned on me. They were going to shoot me like they shot my attacker. The honorable thing would’ve been to let them.”

  “Are you saying you aren't honorable?” I ask.

  He tilts his head. “I'm saying that when my circumstances changed, my allegiance shifted.”

  “I'm glad you joined us,” Rafe says. “Your training and guidance was invaluable in getting us through some difficult months.”

  I bob my head. “Well, I'm happy to see you both feel better. Have you eaten anything yet?”

  Rafe nods. “Soup and crackers. Juice. It was nice of you to have WPN bring us supplies.”

  I want to growl at him and say I told you so, but I don’t. “My brother did that. I asked for aid with no way of knowing whether it was coming. It’s called faith.”

  “Interesting concept,” Rafe says. “Maybe it’s one I’ll come to understand in the coming months. Thank him for me, please.”

  I nod. “Since you're both doing so well, I'll head back to work on preparing more doses.”

  “I'm glad you saved your aunt,” Rafe says. “I hear she's been instrumental in administering this.”

  “She has.” Am I imagining things, or does Rafe look guilty? “Do you know what the charges against her were?”

  Rafe's brows draw together. “Wasn't it assaulting the Unmarked when she went to ask them about the suppressant?”

  I watch his face for any sign that he might have been involved. “Yes, that was one of them.”

  “There was more than one?” Rafe asks.

  “The other charge was that my aunt, who has devoted her life to trying to fix her brother's mistake, after a decade of making and ensuring delivery of the hormone suppressants to the Marked, suddenly decided it was time for all of you to die. Someone forged her confession stating that she substituted the pills she made for the last few years with sugar pills. And we know they were actually substituted for pre-natal vitamins, which is quite odd. Of all things.” I shake my head. “Why would she be stupid enough to use pills that don't even resemble the ones she made? And if she was, why would she confess to the wrong kind of pill? Or ask you about the pills everyone was taking when the suppressant failed, if she made them herself?”

  Rafe frowns. “Why would she?”

  “Why indeed.” I step toward Rafe, my eyes locked on his. “It made me wonder, since I knew she would never have done any of that. I knew she'd been working on a cure to Tercera for years. I thought, who else might have swapped the suppressant? It wasn't David Solomon, because he would have confessed proudly. No, he only planned the Cleansing because of the failure, not the other way around.”

  Rafe shoves back in his chair. “What are you saying, Ruby? We may not always have gotten along, but you’ve always been straight forward, which I appreciated.”

  My blood boils. I'm glad Rafe's fine, but he needs to know it's in spite of his stupidity, not because of it. “Fine. You want me to be clear? Did you get sick of waiting for someone to help your people? Were you tired of watching all your friends lose faith and go off the suppressant voluntarily? Maybe your girlfriend went off of it. Maybe she died and you freaked out. I don’t know what precipitated it, but I think you swapped the suppressant yourself, because you were sick of waiting and you're a gambling man. With a timeline, maybe the Marked would finally be a priority.”

  Rafe's eyes flash. “I would never gamble with the lives of my people. Never.” He sits back, his mouth open. “But—”

  I glance to the right at Todd who's holding a gun on Rafe.

  “What's going on?” I ask.

  “They weren't really my people, were they?” Todd asks. “All of you kids could live indefinitely. A miserable existence it's true, but you had time. An adult who contracts Tercera doesn't have years and years to wait on a cure. And no one cares about the fate of one single person, especially if he’s a former WPN guard. But an entire community of children dying imminently? That would attract attention. Giving you all a timeline that matched mine was my only play.”

  “You're cured now,” I say. “Put the gun down.”

  Todd shakes his head. “I'm cured, but now that you know I did it, every single death in this ent
ire city will be laid at my feet. Thousands if not tens of thousands. No one will acknowledge that the cure only got found when I applied pressure. No one will thank me, which they should. No, I think I'll kill you two and take my chances.”

  Bam, something crashes to the floor and clatters against it.

  We all turn toward the doorway where the sound originated. Sean stands, both hands on a black firearm, his nostrils flaring, and he pulls the trigger. Inside the hospital, the report from the gunshot reverberates loudly. I cover my ears a moment too late.

  Todd drops his gun and stumbles back while a red circle blooms on his chest. “What?” Blood dribbles from the corner of his mouth. He falls back, and lands on the chair, his hands on his chest. His breath is ragged.

  Sean says, “Pam sent me back up with some food. She thought you'd be ready for it, Rafe. I reached the doorway, and heard Todd threatening you.”

  “You did the right thing,” Rafe says.

  “I can call Aunt Anne,” I say. “She might be able to stop the bleeding and maybe even repair the damage.”

  Rafe shakes his head. “We will do nothing for him. He's right. Every death in Baton Rouge is on his head, and when he realized I'd connect the dots to the truth, he was ready to kill all of us to keep his secret.” Rafe walks around the table and stares Todd in the face. “I hope there really is a miserable burning rock somewhere in the afterlife, so you can go where you belong. Tell my dad and Ruby’s we don’t say hello.”

  Todd's eyes close.

  Rafe walks to the doorway where Sean dropped the plastic tray and picks a sandwich up off the ground. He takes a bite. “You can go back to work, Ruby. You don't need to worry about me. We're all healing as well as we can.”

  I nod and walk through the door, but when I reach the lab, I send a nurse to make sure Rafe isn't suffering from shock. I want to tell Sam what happened, but he's out hunting for Marked people we’ve missed. I settle for doing as much as I can to distract myself. I'm flying through the preparation of doses and helping direct triage for the patients Adam's men locate when the door swings open with a bang so loud that we all jump.